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SpaceX’s reusable rocket, Starship – the tallest and most powerful ever launched – will orbit Earth for the first time within days. And because it will also release working Starlink V3 satellites, it will be the first commercially useful Starship mission.

The company has announced that a launch window will open at 7.15am CDT (1.15pm BST) on 22nd September, during which Starship will launch from the company’s Starbase site in Texas.

The flight – Starship’s 14th – will reach an altitude of 275 kilometres and complete six orbits of Earth over 10 hours, with re-entry and splashdown targeted in the Pacific Ocean, to the west of Chile.

This will make it by far the longest and most ambitious test flight of Starship to date. All 13 previous Starship test flights have been, at best, sub-orbital.

Starship is made up of two parts: an upper stage, confusingly also called Starship, and a lower stage, called Super Heavy. Currently, SpaceX is testing the latest third generation of each section using a fail-fast, learn-fast strategy more common to Silicon Valley than the conservative world of space exploration. 

SpaceX is several years into its development programme for Starship, intended to be a rapidly reusable and extremely powerful launch vehicle that will take over the rollout of the company’s Starlink satellites and be a central part of NASA’s Artemis moon missions.

The 14th flight will also see 26 Starlink V3 satellites launched for the first time. Thousands of these new devices will join the existing constellation of satellites that provides internet connections around the world. Until now, Starship test flights have launched only dummy test satellites.

Davide Amato at Imperial College London says that an orbital test is indicative of confidence within the company that the rocket will at least survive the journey to orbit and the release of satellites. But he says that re-entry, where the company has faced problems during recent tests, may be another matter.

“In short, they’re making good progress towards introducing Starship as a successful commercial launcher,” says Amato. “Whether Starship will be ‘revolutionary’, as promised by their CEO, will depend on whether they will be able to achieve a high launch cadence and on whether their design is cost-effective.”

Leah-Nani Alconcel at the University of Birmingham, UK, says that the 14th test flight will be a key step for SpaceX. Not only will the release of V3 satellites help the company update its Starlink constellation – the new satellites fly in a lower orbit than existing Starlink satellites and have higher data capacity – but their larger size than previous models will go some way to showing whether Starship is up to the task of launching its proposed Starmind data centre spacecraft, which are substantially larger.

“I don’t think it’s a huge jump in operational complexity for the launch vehicle, but demonstrating the Starlink V3 delivery to orbit is a significant step,” says Alconcel. “It may not be as flashy as the ‘chopstick catch‘ for the vehicle stages, but it would be a big boost to their commercial capabilities to have both the already-established high-cadence Falcon 9 and a proven Starship in their repertoire.”

Three of the satellites due to be released on this flight have been modified to include cameras that can scan Starship’s heat shield whilst in orbit and transmit images to engineers on Earth.

During the 13th test flight, the booster stage made its ascent as planned, but during descent only eight of the 13 engines intended to slow its fall reignited, causing it to make a hard splashdown into the ocean rather than the planned gentle simulated landing on water. Neither the booster nor upper stage will attempt to make a controlled landing on the 14th flight.

Only two Starship flights have taken place so far in 2026, with flight 14 due to be the third. The upcoming flight will also be the second since SpaceX’s flotation on the stock market, which made controversial founder Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. The number of flights has fallen far beyond bold estimates made in previous years; SpaceX officials hoped to launch as many as 25 Starship test flights last year. In reality, only five test flights occurred that year.

SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for an interview, but the company says on its website that “there have been several modifications to hardware and software to address issues seen on the previous flight”.

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Journalists from MS NOW, CNN and Politico were denied access to the White House grounds on Saturday, one day after President Donald Trump said he is banning the three outlets over their coverage of him.

White House reporter Akayla Gardner said MS NOW journalists were blocked from the grounds for the first time Saturday morning.

“Yesterday our journalists were able to stay here working on the White House grounds,” she said. “This was the first action we know of them actually denying us entry into the White House.”

“The White House belongs to the American people and the decisions made inside are funded by our tax dollars,” MS NOW said in a statement. “MS NOW intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalism in our democracy.“

MS NOW said it will “continue to report on the President, the administration, and the issues that impact the American people.”

CNN reported later Saturday that its journalists were denied access to the White House.

“CNN’s mission to report on the U.S. government will continue regardless of any attempts to restrict physical access to the White House and other government buildings, or any other attempts to impede our journalism,” CNN said in a statement. “We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do our reporting without hindrance or interference from the government and this ban is an illegal assault under that right.”

The news organization reiterated it “stands fully behind our White House team.”

Politico’s editor-in-chief, Jonathan Greenberger, emailed the newsroom: ″A few minutes ago, our colleague Cheyenne Haslett attempted to enter the White House to do her job as a POLITICO reporter. Secret Service denied her entry to the complex and confiscated the pass that allows her access to the White House. We stand by her and all reporters here covering the White House. As we said yesterday, we will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights.”

When asked to respond, the White House referred CNBC to the president’s comments yesterday.

On Friday, Trump said in a Truth Social post that those outlets “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America.”

“Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow,” he added.

Later that day, in the Oval Office, the president said he was imposing the ban in response to “cumulative stories” by the three outlets.

“You get sick of it,” he said.

In 2018, Trump’s White House briefly tried to suspend a CNN reporter’s press pass, and it is currently being sued over an attempted ban of Associated Press journalists from certain spaces.

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A Trump administration proposal to exclude some types of immigrants from the 2030 census might not expand the congressional map for Republicans, and could even result in fewer House seats in red states.

If congressional seats were redistributed based on recent census figures, excluding undocumented immigrants and other noncitizens without green cards could cause Texas to lose a congressional seat it would otherwise have gained, according to a New York Times analysis. Minnesota, a blue-leaning state, could gain a seat.

States are allotted congressional seats based on their populations during a process called reapportionment, which uses census data and occurs every 10 years. The next decennial census is slated to happen in 2030.

Though there are no official public statistics for the immigrants targeted by the proposal, two separate organizations estimated the group’s size in two recent years, 2023 and 2024. The Times used those estimates to explore the effect Mr. Trump’s proposal could have on the number of congressional seats each state would have received if reapportionment had happened in each of those years.

Both groups — FWD.us and Pew — produce detailed statistics on the types of foreign-born residents in order to estimate the undocumented population. Despite using different methods, they ended up with broadly similar results.

If reapportionment had happened in 2024 under the Trump administration proposal, it would have struck two seats from Republican strongholds in Texas and Florida, according to The Times’s analysis of the FWD.us estimates. Minnesota and Oregon would each have received one additional seat.

The map would look slightly different using Pew’s estimates, which are based on 2023 population figures. A hypothetical scenario for that year would result in a political wash. Texas would again have one fewer seat than it would have had under a full census count, and Minnesota one more, but Ohio would also gain a seat at the expense of Rhode Island.

“This isn’t exactly what I think the powers that be expected,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew who produced its breakdown of the immigrant population.

The variance between the scenarios can be attributed to differences both in the census counts for each year and in the two groups’ estimates.

For example, Florida’s growth between 2023 and 2024 would have been enough to give it another House seat. But excluding the immigrants targeted in the proposal would have canceled out that gain.

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Result in fewer House seats in red states.

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Deep in the Bolivian Yungas cloud forests, there stalks an utterly adorable beast: smaller than a house cat and spotted like a leopard, the creature has long been known to local communities as a tilcayo. Scientists, however, have only just formally discovered it—marking the first new wildcat species to be identified in more than a century.

The new species, Leopardus tilcayo, is a type of tiger cat, a group of small felines in the genus Leopardus that are native to South America. In a paper published on Thursday in Current Biology, the researchers identify five distinct species of tiger cats in South America, including the tilcayo.

The discovery came by accident, said the study’s co-lead author Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz to NBC News. A man had brought one of the kitties into the sanctuary that she volunteered at, and she noticed that it didn’t quite match any existing tiger cat species. After a series of genetic tests, she and her team discovered the cat must be a new species that had likely diverged from its closest tiger cat relative some 1.4 million years ago.

The discovery of a new mammal, especially a cat, is rare. It’s even more rare to find an entirely new species rather than a variation of a known species. The study analyzed the genomes of 38 cats, including 26 Leopardus cats, comprising “the most complete genetic study yet,” said the study’s co-lead author Jonas Lescroart, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, to Gizmodo.

It’s unclear how many tilcayos are out there, and the authors have said that the study should be a catalyst for intensified conservation efforts across tiger cat species.

“Describing a new cat species after more than 100 years shows how much we still have to learn about the biodiversity around us. But it also reminds us that we need to protect the Yungas forests, which are home to so many species—including some we are only beginning to understand,” Nogales-Ascarrunz said in a statement.

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Actress Tisha Campbell is reminding us it’s never too late to get diagnosed. The former Martin star recently found out she’s on the autism spectrum, which she shared during a guest appearance on Way Up with Angela Yee. 

After seeing specialists and undergoing intense testing, the 57-year-old received an AuDHD diagnosis, a term used for individuals with both autism and ADHD. 

“I actually saw two specialists, and I took 12 tests each. They all vary from oral tests to written tests to just Q&As. And so I took all 12 twice, and I just got my diagnosis back,” she explained. 

The My Wife and Kids actress also added that she’s level one on the spectrum. That means support is required for socializing and flexible thinking, but they can otherwise live life independently. Level one individuals can easily fly under the radar because they appear neurotypical.

“I have a lot of autistic tendencies, and I’m level one,” she explained to Yee. “So for me, I may not look like I need support, but I have earphones to block out sounds because I, too, have audio processing differences. Like, everything comes at me all at once.”

Some people don’t think a diagnosis later in life can be helpful because you’ve already learned to navigate the world without one. But Campbell shared that getting diagnosed has put puzzle pieces together, providing clarity for many of her life experiences. One being her hyperfixation on acting and music, which led to her undeniable success over the past few decades.  

“A lot of autistic people have- they used to call them obsessions or fixations, but we call them special interests now. And my special interest was always acting and music,” she explained. 

Campbell’s diagnosis couldn’t be more timely. She released her memoir The A Word: A Mother’s Journey Through Autism and Love on September 15. The book documents her experience raising her autistic son Xen, who was diagnosed at 18 months. However, the memoir doesn’t contain her personal experiences with autism since she was only recently diagnosed. 

“I got the diagnosis after I wrote the book, so that part’s not even in the book. So I’m actually talking to you about this. My newer diagnosis, this just happened this year.”

If you follow Campbell, you know she’s been a staunch advocate of autism awareness over the years, shedding light on the disorder, which one in 31 children and one in 45 adults across the country have. Core messaging around autism awareness is that a diagnosis and services are there to support versus change, who autistic people are. The actress said getting diagnosed has helped her gain more self-awareness. 

“I feel like I know myself so much better,” she said, adding that she’s been hiding her stimming—repetitive body movements, sounds, or object uses to help self-regulate over the years.

Campbell’s diagnosis is a full-circle moment as she’s gone from advocating for her son over the years to also advocating for herself. Other celebs like SZA and Chrisette Michele have also been diagnosed with autism as adults.

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NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – JULY 04: Tisha Campbell speaks onstage during day 2 of the 2026 ESSENCE Festival of Culture® presented by Coca-Cola® at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on July 04, 2026, in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for ESSENCE)

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When President Trump’s envoys sat down with Vladimir V. Putin at the Kremlin this month, the Russian leader exuded confidence.

Within months, he said, Russian troops would finally capture Ukraine’s entire Donbas region. And Russia was poised to pummel Ukraine’s electricity grid, setting the stage for a miserable winter.

Then one of the envoys, Jared Kushner, tried to push back. With all due respect, you told us exactly that a year ago, Mr. Kushner said to the Russian president. What are the chances we come back here in another year and you are again saying the same thing? Maybe we don’t lose a year?

The exchange, described by a person familiar with the talks and by a U.S. official, captured the quandary of Mr. Trump’s more than 18 months of efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Congress this week passed a landmark sanctions bill taking aim at Russia’s energy sector, a new attempt to make Russia “suffer” for its invasion and to pressure Mr. Putin to make compromises.

But even as that bill makes its way to Mr. Trump’s desk, the Trump administration is doubling down on a different approach: offering benefits for Russia that officials hope will get Mr. Putin to consider ending his war.

Among the new inducements: the White House is now considering signing business deals with Russia before it stops fighting in Ukraine, according to two people close to the talks. The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to be candid about the negotiations, said that deals with Russia before the end of the war were possible because they would show that the United States is serious about a reset relationship with Russia.

The approach represents a shift from Mr. Trump’s pledge last year that business deals with Russia would not come “until we get the war settled.” It indicates that Mr. Trump’s envoys for ending the war, Steve Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, are groping for new ways to entice Russia to stop fighting, now that it has become clear that Ukraine will not withdraw from the swath of its own territory that Mr. Putin insists he must control before the war ends.

And it contrasts with the approach advocated by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress — not to mention Kyiv’s European allies and Ukraine itself — that only heightened economic and military pressure on Mr. Putin can compel him to compromise.

“This bill will cripple Russia’s war machine and finally bring Putin to the negotiating table,” Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and one of the sanctions bill’s leading proponents, said on Wednesday after a bipartisan majority passed the legislation, 262 to 159.

Mr. Trump has indicated he will sign the bill, which was championed by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, until his death in July. It would allow the president to levy tariffs of as much as 100 percent on countries buying the most Russian oil or gas and would impose sanctions on Russian officials, businesspeople and financial institutions. Senator Darline Graham, Mr. Graham’s sister who replaced him in his seat, said it would “increase the president’s negotiating leverage.”

But insofar as the Trump administration is pursuing a carrot-and-stick approach with Mr. Putin, carrots seem the focus. The U.S. official said that the administration wanted to create more incentives for members of the Russian elite to push for peace. Executing some business deals before the end of the war could help convince anti-American hawks around Mr. Putin that Mr. Trump really does want to create a new relationship with Russia, the official added.

Balazs Jarabik, a former European Union diplomat in Kyiv who now works at R. Politik, a political analysis firm, said signs pointed to the United States “considering bigger concessions toward Russia.”

Washington “is now signaling that some deals could move forward if Moscow first demonstrates concrete restraint,” said Mr. Jarabik, who has been tracking the talks closely. “Washington had previously resisted signing such agreements before a cease-fire.”

It was not clear what deals in particular are on the table. The Kremlin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said after Mr. Putin’s meeting with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner on Sept. 5 that “economic issues and potential major mutually beneficial Russian-American projects were discussed in some detail.”

The Kremlin has been promoting business opportunities to the White House ever since Mr. Trump returned to office last year. Russian officials have floated deals for rare earths and aluminum, joint ventures in the Arctic and even getting U.S. companies involved in selling Russian natural gas to Europe.

Mr. Trump has hailed Russia’s economic potential as “tremendous,” but he has previously held out business deals as a reward for a Russia that makes peace.

“They want to do business,” Mr. Trump said ahead of his Alaska summit with Mr. Putin last year. “But they’re not doing business until we get the war settled.”

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President Donald Trump shaking hands with President Vladimir Putin of Russia during their meeting in Alaska last year. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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A nuclear fusion reaction has produced the brightest X-rays ever on Earth, rivalling those emitted by some stars. This could open the door for new extreme experiments, such as mimicking how the sun absorbs radiation and testing how materials that could improve future fusion reactions hold up to nuclear blasts.

The reaction itself was also hotter than the sun. “The truth of the matter is, when the fuel is burning, and ignition is occurring, and that [blast] wave is propagating out, we’re hotter than the sun,” says Ryan Lester at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “We are the hottest point in the local solar system.”

In 2021, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California achieved nuclear fusion ignition, a reaction that is energetic enough to be self-sustaining. This was a milestone on the path to developing nuclear fusion as a useful source of energy.

Now, Lester and his colleagues have added windows to the tiny cylinder within which ignition happens. This let out the brightest X-rays ever created in the lab and turned ignition into an unprecedentedly extreme physics experiment.

The researchers shot 192 very energetic laser beams into a gold cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser, which contained a carbon capsule filled with heavy versions of hydrogen atoms. The beams generated a bath of X-rays that compressed and heated the capsule so much that the hydrogen fuel started to undergo nuclear fusion, leading to ignition.

Once ignition happened, the windows evaporated and let the X-rays out, emitting tens of trillions of watts of power, on a par with the brightness of some red dwarf stars.

There are decades of computer simulations, prototyping and experimental tests behind every element of the apparatus that ultimately achieved ignition, says Lester. “This is a highly refined, highly optimised system to keep the radiation in, keep it warm [and] control capsule symmetry so that all the things line up in a perfect row and ignition can occur,” he says.

Laura Berzak Hopkins at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey says that achieving ignition in the first place was a generational accomplishment, requiring details that researchers have worked on for decades. It is significant that ignition could not only be repeated, but repeated with a modified cylinder, she says.

To move from demonstrating ignition to using nuclear fusion as an efficient energy source, we have to learn something new about it every time it happens, says Berzak Hopkins. Lester and his colleagues have shown more ways to do so, she says.

Most studies of extremely energetic conditions, whether in nuclear fusion reactors or stars, rely on computer simulations, but the latest experiment could offer a more direct and exact alternative. One notable example would be studies of the sun’s opacity, or how some elements within it absorb radiation.

Lester says he hopes the experiment will also aid in designs for future ones, for example by providing a more detailed view of what happens when very low-density foams are added to the capsule. This is because it has been theorised that they could stabilise the reaction and make it more efficient. Such experiments could start as early as next year, he says.

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“Gen Z will be the least trusting generation in modern American history,” wrote Ryan Burge, who is also a data analyst and professor of practice at the university, in the report.

Millennials were slightly more trusting than Gen Z at 24%, while 30% of Gen X and 29% of boomers agreed that most people can be trusted. The Silent Generation—those born before 1945—is by far the most trusting at 41%, according to data between 2021 and 2024 that Burge cited from the General Social Survey, a biennial sociological study conducted out of the University of Chicago.

This phenomenon certainly colors Gen Z’s personal relationships. But in the era of automated hiring processes, ghosting, forever layoffs, and constant side hustles, it’s also reshaping the workplace as we know it. 

Jaded, tired, and anxious

Burge puts this trust gap down to a number of reasons in his analysis, including religion and education. But, as he explained to Fast Company, “[Gen Z’s] parents raised them to be extra cautious about everything,” he says. 

“They’re just terrified of making a mistake, and I think that leads naturally to a lack of trust in other people.”

A sheltered upbringing that overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic, compounded by cancel culture and social media scrutiny and cynicism, has led Gen Z to embrace loss aversion, which Burge explained as “the idea that losing feels worse than winning feels good.” And they’re more distrustful because of it.

This isn’t a uniquely Gen Z issue. Over a third of the employees surveyed said they don’t have colleagues that they trust enough to share personal issues with. More than four in 10 rarely or never have conversations with coworkers about anything other than work. 

But for Gen Z in particular, this trust gap is linked with having entered the workforce during COVID, and missing out on in-office soft skills as a result of remote learning and working. 

“Unfortunately, I think a lot of young people just don’t ever build up that baseline of trust,” says Burge. “Being around people, what you learn more and more is that the average person is pretty trustworthy.”

Disillusionment with a broken system

Gen Z’s distrust is especially noticeable in the workplace, data suggests.

Gen Zers are 16 times as likely to say they don’t trust their coworkers as Gen X employees, according to a 2026 survey from Workday. They’re also significantly more mistrustful of their employers: Only 41% of Gen Z employees said they trust their employer, according to a 2025 Indeed survey, compared with about 65% of millennials and 71% of baby boomers. Further, a 2025 GenHQ study found that 47% of Gen Z have quit a job due to lack of trust in leadership, and 45% would take a 10% pay cut to work for a boss they completely trust. 

Trust is one of the strongest predictors of whether employees stay or leave. But over the past few decades, American business has gradually upended its deal with workers. If workers aren’t fearful of their jobs being automated, they are at least skeptical of companies using AI to justify big layoffs. These fears are not unfounded. Eight in 10 leaders have used “layoffs” to get rid of an employee they wanted gone, according to a 2024 survey from Resume Builder, and 54% did it to shirk paying severance. On top of that, many Gen Z workers watched their parents push themselves to burnout, only to be ousted from long-held positions. They’re skeptical about showing the same professional loyalty, instead prioritizing work-life balance and often seeking out their own nonlinear paths instead of trusting corporate ladders. Social media, awash with “get laid off with me” vlogs and stories about toxic bosses, has only amplified this sense of mistrust in traditional workplaces. The surveillance boom is further damaging the trust between employers and employees. The benefit of being less trusting, of course, is you are less likely to be taken advantage of. But as Burge notes, “That’s the cost of doing business. That’s literally the cost of being a human.” If workers can’t fundamentally trust each other, true connection feels impossible.

Being ghosted and burning out

Scam listings and ghost jobs are everywhere. The 2026 Job Seeker Nation Report from the AI-powered hiring platform Employ found that 32% of applicants say they’ve been ghosted by a company. (On the flip side, a 2025 survey of hiring managers found that 54% had been ghosted by a Gen Z candidate after extending an offer.) This crisis of trust is bad for business. 

For Gen Z workers, “I think ultimately what happens is they’re just super unproductive,” Grace McCarrick, a speaker and creator who leads corporate soft skills workshops, tells Fast Company. “They’re too busy worrying about the hidden agenda.”

Employee engagement has hit its lowest level since 2020, according to Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, dropping for the second year in a row and costing an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity.

“People are really unhappy at work,” said McCarrick. “You would be too if you thought around every corner was some mustache-twirling monster trying to make your life worse and make themselves $100 million.”

Daring to trust

Trust is a two-way street. McCarrick believes young workers also have a responsibility to establish a baseline level of trust with their colleagues and employers—at least until proof of the contrary. 

“You don’t have to trust that the CEO is a good person. You don’t have to trust that the company is being completely transparent about every decision,” she said. “I think you have to do the best you can to get into a job where you can go, ‘OK, I can trust enough.’”

Burge, the author of the report on trust, says he’s “a big believer that trust really builds up over a long set of interactions with other people.” Employers can help build trust with Gen Z by acknowledging their contributions, following through on their words with actions, and acting with integrity. 

“When decisions affect people, I think it’s important to get as close as you can to why you made that decision and what alternatives would have been,” says McCarrick. 

In the end, it’s up to Gen Z to surrender suspicion, to fall and hope someone catches them. Even if no one does? 

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Hmmmm ,,,  Hail to the foresight of 3-tier government under God!

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Judge Patrick J. Schiltz’s warning was stark.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement had violated nearly 100 orders issued by Minnesota’s Federal District Court during the month of January, including some mandating the release of undocumented immigrants from detention.

The violations needed to stop immediately. “ICE is not a law unto itself,” Judge Schiltz wrote in his Jan. 28 order.

Judges around the country took notice, not only of the scale of the allegation but because such a harsh reproach was coming from the pen of Judge Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee with almost 20 years of experience on the bench. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the 1980s and has enjoyed close ties to the conservative legal establishment for decades. This was not the profile of a judge likely to engage in a high-stakes standoff with the White House.

In a rare 90-minute interview seven months later, Judge Schiltz said his order had been prompted by concern that the Trump administration’s disregard for court orders was clogging his courthouse to a near standstill, contributing to rising tensions in the protest-filled city and, ultimately, putting the constitutional order at risk.

What happened in Minnesota’s federal court, he said, “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”

He said he thought the violations were largely the result of incompetence and staffing shortages, but also worried that the Justice Department had not taken their corrosive effect seriously enough.

“I would say aloud to myself, ‘This just never happens,’” he added, referring to the violated orders and other unusual behavior by the Justice Department. He was in his chambers, which has signed photos of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the wall. Earlier in his career, he helped found a law school at a Catholic university in Minneapolis, and wrote a renowned law review article about the moral perils of the legal profession.

Judge Schiltz, who served as the district’s chief judge from mid-2022 through June 2026, declined to discuss ongoing cases. But he and six other members of Minnesota’s federal bench agreed to speak to The New York Times about last winter’s tumult, to describe how an intense national spotlight, a deteriorating relationship with the Justice Department and a flood of lawsuits had combined to put their court under tremendous pressure.

In the view of the Department of Homeland Security, it operates “in line with the U.S. Constitution and all applicable federal laws,” said Chandler Rebel, a D.H.S. spokesman.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the administration “will continue to fully comply with court orders.” She asserted that in most instances where there was an issue, “the underlying substance of the order was satisfied even where a secondary deadline was missed.”

Ms. Pels added that it she found it “remarkable that sitting federal judges are giving on-the-record interviews” criticizing the administration, and suggested that they consider recusing themselves if they “have made public comments on pending or related matters.”

It is indeed unusual for federal judges to give extensive interviews that reflect on periods when their rulings have made headlines.

The seven judges who spoke to The Times were appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents. They included six of the seven judges who held active status in Minnesota last winter.

“We are allowed to speak out about judicial independence,” said Judge Nancy E. Brasel, whom Mr. Trump appointed in 2018. “And so we should, in order to keep it.”

The tensions in Minnesota eased after the administration announced an end to its surge in mid-February, following the killings of two civilians by federal agents.

Judge Schiltz said he hoped the portrait of how the bench had handled the crisis would help Americans better understand how the United States’ system of government depends on the rule of law.

“The rule of law to democracy is like oxygen to a human body,” he said. “It is something that you absolutely need to survive, and yet it’s something that people just take for granted.”

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Judge Patrick J. Schiltz in his courtroom. A former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court, he does not have the profile of a jurist likely to engage in a high-stakes standoff with the executive branch. Credit…Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

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Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer—because it is so hard to detect, cases are typically caught in the late stages of the disease. A person can live with pancreatic cancer for years and not know because the early symptoms are so subtle as to be absent or negligible. There is no routine screening test, as there is for breast cancer or colon cancer, and most diagnoses happen only at advanced stages, when symptoms such as weight loss, abdominal pain, and blood sugar problems become unignorable.

As a result, the five-year survival rate of pancreatic cancer is just 13 percent. A new blood test aims to change that. In results published today in Nature Medicine, scientists show how the blood test, called PANXEON, can accurately detect pancreatic cancer in its early stages and could even identify precancerous signs, enabling doctors to quickly intervene and treat the disease.

The results come on the heels of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a drug for pancreatic cancer called daraxonrasib. The medication is aimed at people with late-stage pancreatic cancer who have already been through chemotherapy. In a testament to the intractability of this form of cancer, the drug, which is hailed as a breakthrough treatment by experts, improves survival by just half a year compared with chemotherapy alone (with median survival of 13.2 months versus 6.7 months, respectively).

About 1,800 people enrolled in an early-stage clinical trial to test the efficacy of PANXEON across the U.S., Europe and Asia. The test accurately detected stage 1 and 2 pancreatic cancers approximately 87 percent of the time, with a low rate of false positives. The blood test also identified advanced pancreatic dysplasia—the presence of a precancerous condition in the pancreas—more than 64 percent of the time in people with high-risk pancreatic cysts. Together, the results suggest the test could flag cancer earlier and offer opportunities for clinicians to intervene before the disease has had a chance to spread to other organs.

The blood test screens for three molecular signatures of pancreatic cancer. Researchers then use artificial intelligence to assign a risk score that measures individual risk of cancer. Doctors can use the score to determine whether more investigation or treatment is necessary, particularly in people who have inherited risk of pancreatic cancer or who have had pancreatitis, for example. More advanced clinical trials are needed before this blood test could possibly be used in the clinic, but the results are promising in a disease that is so difficult to manage.

“The earlier we find pancreatic cancer, the greater the chance that meaningful intervention is still possible,” said Ajay Goel, study senior author and chair of molecular diagnostics and experimental therapeutics at City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment organization headquartered in California, in a statement.

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Science Photo Library–STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/Getty Images

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